SINCE Toulon is just over the border from Italy and in range of Italian TV masts, it seems more than likely that shortly after overseeing the latest stage in Toulon's reinvigorated season, Richard Cockerill, was able to sit down and watch the team he will take charge of in a couple of months. He won't have been impressed.

It is hard to see any positives in their ninth consecutive defeat.

The Italians won most of the physical battles, including a push-over try when the game was in the balance and, realistically, could have won by more since it was the television official, not the Edinburgh defence, that cost the home side two more tries in the final stages.

Edinburgh looked like a team just playing out time before the season ends.

They know they will finish in the bottom four of the Guinness PRO12 and seem resigned to that – which goes a long way to explaining the air of gloom hanging around Duncan Hodge, the interim head coach.

"The remedies are within our control, we have to keep trying, there is no option other than to plough on," was his verdict.

"There is definitely a lack of confidence. We have lost a run of games, but there are some issues in there that we are struggling to fix."

The question that will be worrying Cockerill is whether there are easy solutions to the bigger problems or whether they are fated to repeat the same mistakes until he can bring in a root-and-branch reform – and whether he will be given time to change the fundamentals.

In the decade since Edinburgh came back into SRU ownership, they have only once had a brief taste of solid league form, when the 2008-09 season ended with them in second place.

Andy Robinson used the enthusiasm that generated to support his case to become Scotland coach.

Since then the finishes have been: sixth, eighth, 11th, 10th, eighth, eighth, and ninth. This season they are currently ninth, though to stay there they have to pick up their first league win since moving to Myreside when they face Newport Gwent Dragons in a fortnight.

In the meantime, coaches have come and gone. Four full-time coaches – Cockerill will be the fifth – and four interim appointments in a decade is a huge turnover and goes some way to explaining the malaise. Only Robinson and Nick Scrivener, an interim appointment in 2011, left of their own accord.

Perhaps the most obvious proof of how bad things are – apart from the results – is that the squad that faced Treviso contained six players used by Scotland in the recent RBS Six Nations Championship, but three of them were selected on the bench. Not rested, dropped.

In the end Ben Toolis fell ill and Grant Gilchrist, who started for Scotland against Italy, did actually play, but that does nothing to change the point that if you have players who earn international places but are not producing at club level a couple of weeks later there is something deeply wrong.

One player who has tasted both sides of the success scale is Glenn Bryce, one of the few to come away from the game with his reputation intact.

He has seen the recipe for success when he was at Glasgow. Now that he has shifted across the country, he feels the foundations are there, but there is still a lot of work to be done.

"It is not a lack of hard work, you can see on the pitch that we are putting in a lot of effort but things are just not going our way," he said. "It is never good coming in on a Monday morning after another defeat but we have to pick ourselves back up again, come in with smiles on our faces; keep at it.

"At Glasgow, we had loads of experience across the board and, as a young player, I was picking their brains. With Glasgow, the same team played consistently, week-out for four or five years. This is a new team so it is not going to happen overnight."

Perhaps not, but it is four years since Mark Dodson, the SRU chief executive branded Edinburgh a "basket case" and vowed to fix it. After all that time, it is still a team that has not won in the PRO12 this calendar year.

The only semblance for an excuse was that while Treviso are still locked in a battle with Zebre for the Italian place in the European Champions Cup, there was nothing to motivate Edinburgh and, on a cold, wet night when everything needed to be spot-on, they were a long way off.

All that despite opening the scoring with a Jason Tovey penalty. That pushover try and kicks from Ian McKinley, the fly-half, gave Treviso a comfortable lead before Eduardo Gori, the scrum half, made it safe when he featured twice in a move that ended with Angelo Esposito crossing.

Scorers: Benetton Treviso: Tries: Barbieri (36), Esposito (61). Con: McKinley. Pen: McKinley (25, 30, 41)

Edinburgh: Pens: Tovey (24, 56)

Scoring sequence (Benetton Treviso first): 0-3, 3-3, 6-3, 13-3 (half time), 16-3, 16-6, 21-6.

Benetton Treviso: L McLean (T Benvenuti, 61); A Esposito, T Iannone, A Sgarbi, L Sperandio; I McKinley (T Tebaldi, 73), E Gori (G Bronzini, 61); F Zani (A Porolli, 73), L Bigi (D Giazzon, 58), S Ferrari (T Pasquali, 61), M Fuser, D Budd (C) (J Montauriol, 70), F Minto, A Steyn (M Lazzaroni, 77), R Barbieri.

Edinburgh: G Bryce; D Hoyland, C Dean (J Rasolea, 61), P Burleigh, R Scholes; J Tovey (D Weir, 73), N Fowles (S Hidalgo-Clyne, 61); M McCallum (D Appiah, 58), R Ford (C) (S McInally, 58), S Berghan (K Bryce, 73), F McKenzie (A Bresler, 49), G Gilchrist, V Mata, H Watson, V Fihaki (C du Preez, 61).

Referee: F Murphy (Ireland)

Attendance: 2,480